Are you an under achiever?

[Miker]

I feel like I let everyone down. Everyone used to (and still does) tell me how smart I was, how I was going to be successful. I used to be excited about the future. But I have a faulty personality, prone to giving up or starting over. At least, that's why I think I underachieve. And if you didn't pick it up, I also am extremely pessimistic. Pretty much all of the qualities that make someone a loser without any success or future.

I've failed math classes twice and might be doing it again (and if I do, I'll only have one more chance to make it up before I leave high school). And you can't even get an arts degree without advanced math of some sort.

I have found that it is not if we can learn something but how we learn it. The method is key to aspies. I think we can learn anything, its just finding the right method.

 

[Miker]

I didn't reach many of the 'milestones' that other people my age normally reach - I don't have children, I don't have a career and don't earn nearly as much money as most my age, despite having a postgraduate degree.

Maybe as aspies we need to define our own yardstick and measure our worth against that. I can relate to the things that you have listed and it is the non Aspie yardstick which causes the stress!

 

[Cinnamon115]

I try to be. In my experience, if I do really well, people assume I will always do well on everything and then give me lots of stuff to do or put me in charge of a project. That then causes me to get very overwhelmed. So I try to not do super well on things.

 

[Jimbo]

As I have gotten older now. I find myself asking the ultimate big question. What is achievement? What is the ultimate goal? You step back and look at the big picture of human history and you gotta ask yourself. What are we working for. You're born, you move some earth around, and you die.

So ya! I'm an underachiever. But it's not because the goals are unreachable. Ive always believed that "if there's a will, there's a way.". For me. It's a question of, is achieving the goal worth the trouble. I've work my ass off to achieve some goals out there. Only to find out that they are not what I wanted or expected.

That's exactly how I feel about it. People spend their lives striving for more of everything and when they get something they learn that that doesn't satisfy. If we learn to be content with where we are in life we will be much happier.

 

[superboyian]

After reading the above replies it got me thinking. Maybe I spend too much time comparing my life to others. Especially with Facebook. Your friends constantly post how wonderful their lives are and it starts a comparison game.

Maybe many of us are content right where we are. I am fairly content with my achievements but often wonder if I am capable of more.

That was the mistake that I kept making, comparing myself to everyone else since I felt like I'm not doing as well as the people I have known. Some of them I know are even running their own business which I felt like I've not reached to that stage but hey, I'm only just a waiter who works hours, missed out a lot on GCSE's because the school I was in was a SEN school which was very limited, but for someone who is more than capable, I felt very limited or an underachiever in many ways.

Yet, I was able to pass all my college degrees when I was in college. Got the functional skills needed which apparently is equivalent to a GCSE C and yet right now, its a possibility that I'm far more than capable than what I'm doing now.

To some degree I'm content right now and its very likely that yes, you are capable of doing more. Only way to find out is to take some risks. Sometimes, it could be the best decision that you have ever made. Also if you kept focused on it, then you could pretty much flourish and eventually achieve far more than you would have ever imagined.